Assuring flight hardware in a launch vehicle prior to launch and isolating errors on the launch pad has become a critical need in the space industry. Without isolation of faults, launches can be delayed causing excessive costs. Furthermore, until root cause is found, a launch vehicle fault may ground an entire fleet of vehicles. Assuring a vehicle is ready to launch requires a lot of testing, as well as insight, and accessing failed hardware is not always possible on the launch pad.
Although some testability is usually available in launch vehicles, isolation of faults is very limited and it is not uncommon to replace failed equipment and then try to duplicate failures. Without excellent insight into details surrounding a failure, the failure can quickly evolve into an Un-Verified Failure (UVF), causing excessive costs in de-processing hardware to find root cause. The time to find root cause can be excessive, potentially grounding a launch vehicle for months.